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Published: February 10th 2014
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Lima
View from my brother's house in La Molina I have arrived in Lima, to start a trip which would not have happened, but for last year’s event. A journey I am undertaking with my mother. It should have been my father who accompanied my mother, it was their trip. But it was not to be. And so my mother and I start on this journey, on the trip she and my dad had planned.
It is in a very real sense a new beginning. For the first time I won’t be able to share my travels with my dad, he won’t be reading my blogs, he won’t be asking me questions about the places I visit, he won’t be tracing my wanderings on a map back home, and when I come home, he won’t be there waiting for me.
This trip with my mother is the first, but not the last, and in that sense also this is a new start. For in the future, I have decided, I will accompany my mum on those annual extended voyages my father and her always took. It will be nice to travel with somebody every now and again, instead of always hitting the road on my own.
So
Lima
Pool and house here we are in Lima, Peru, visiting my brother. The last time I was in Peru, and indeed, the last time I was in South America was around ten years ago. Since that time my brother has moved house approximately six times, but all within the same neighbourhood. When I was here last time I actually didn’t see anything of Lima, so this time I have been going around the various parts of the city.
My mother having been here many more times, went with me, telling me about the places my father and her visited when they were in town. It was interesting to see all those spots, because I had heard about them from their stories and seen the pictures.
We went to the historic centre of Lima and walked around and visited some of the old churches and colonial mansions. We went to Miraflores, an upscale part of the city, and walked along its cliffs overlooking the Pacific, my mother pointing out the cafés and restaurants they used to frequent. To the district of Barranco we went, adjoining Miraflores, a bohemian part of the city, a favourite with artists, hippies and backpackers. I took a
Lima
View from the cliffs of Miraflores photo of a ruined church with vultures sitting atop its spires, a picture I know my dad had taken years earlier as well. And on our way to La Punta at the other end of Lima, we visited an old Spanish fort, which my dad and my mum had tried in vain to visit several times. It had always been closed for one reason or another, but we got in this time. There was not much to see inside, though the views from the turrets were good.
The stories, and the memories of the photos seen at home of those places, they all made everything much more special and significant than it otherwise would have been.
To get around town we took minibuses, and in the past it had been my dad’s task to discover which bus went which way, and where to change buses. He was very good at those kinds of things, and loved to do them. With my dad gone, it was now my turn to find out how the system worked. I did it well enough if I say so myself, and I felt some pride in taking over his job.
But we
Lima
Lighthouse in Miraflores weren’t just here to visit Lima, we had come in the first place to see my brother and his family. My brother and his wife moved to Lima for a simple reason, which was that they got employment at CIP. What is CIP? It stands for Centro International de la Papa, or in English, the International Potato Centre, which has its headquarters in Lima, the capital of the country that brought us those wonderful vegetables.
You might laugh when you hear that there is something like an International Potato Centre, but the work it does is invaluable. The potato is immensely nutritious, it needs relatively little maintenance and can be grown nearly everywhere with a little bit of tweaking. CIP has laboratories and test fields around the world, especially in Africa, where they investigate which potato varieties grow best in which regions. Because a potato that works well in Europe doesn’t necessarily do so in Kenya.
Anyway, in short what CIP does is an important part in helping combat malnutrition in the poorer parts of the world, where a simple crop like the potato can make a huge difference. Peru itself is of course the centre of the
Lima
Having sea-food in a restaurant in Miraflores universe as far as potatoes are concerned and the variety on display here is mind-boggling, there seem to be literarily thousands of different kinds of spuds!
In between all his research and helping the poor he luckily also found time for us. We have had barbecues, we have celebrated my nieces’ 12
th birthday by going to Peru’s first ‘
international standard fun park’, which turned out to made up of old, defunct American funfair attractions (the trailers still had Oklahoma and Texas license plates on them). He also introduced us to maracujá sour, which is like pisco sour, but made with maracujás (passion fruit) instead of limes. It is very tasty I can assure you. And he took us to Pachacamac, an archaeological site just outside Lima on the coast, or as my brother’s wife would call it: ‘
another dusty ruin.’
We have had a good time here, but our time in Lima is over now, at least for the next three weeks. In those weeks we will be travelling through Paraguay and Uruguay, but that is another story, for another blog.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
A new beginning
Best wishes on this new direction in your life...embracing family in your travels in contrast to a determination to be alone on the road. I hope you always find life interesting and rewarding.